Abstract
The thermal protection systems (TPS) for the Shuttle/Centaur were designed to provide fail-safe thermal protection during prelaunch, launch ascent, and on-orbit operations as well as during potential abort, where the Shuttle and Centaur would return to Earth. The TPS selected used a helium-purged polyimide foam beneath three radiation shields for the liquid-hydrogen (LH2) tank and radiation shields only for the liquid-oxygen (LO2) tank. A double-walled vacuum bulkhead separated the two tanks. The LH2 tank had one 1.9 cm-thick layer of foam on the forward bulkhead and two layers on the larger-area sidewall. Full scale tests of the flight vehicle in a simulated Shuttle cargo bay gave total prelaunch heating rates of 25.9 and 12.9 kW for the LH2 and LO2 tanks, respectively. Calorimeter tests on a representative sample of the LH2 tank sidewall TPS indicated that the measured unit heating rate would rapidly decrease from the prelaunch rate of ≈300 W/m2 to a desired rate of < 4 W/m2 once on-orbit.
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© 1988 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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MacNeil, P.N., England, J.E., Knoll, R.H. (1988). Design, Development, and Test of Shuttle/Centaur G-Prime Cryogenic Tankage Thermal Protection Systems. In: Fast, R.W. (eds) Advances in Cryogenic Engineering. A Cryogenic Engineering Conference Publication, vol 33. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9874-5_42
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9874-5_42
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